April 2017

I was contacted by Teespring to see if I’d like to check out one of their shirts from a selection of slogan tees. These shirts were female-focused and I am (still) an early-30s guy but as I was more interested in checking out their print quality than following the hottest trends I didn’t really mind and gladly took a sample of the “pizza is my soulmate” shirt.

Teespring, for those that don’t know, is a print-on-demand (POD) company that produces a wide range of products from tees to mugs and tote bags. All their designs are user-generated which naturally does mean there is a very wide level of talent on display. There can be a tendency for “demographic specific” designs to do well since Teespring is popular with the “Facebook entrepreneur” crowd . I am a t-shirt snob (and an entrepreneur) so I am a bit cynical of this practise but as long as people are happy then I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t really mattyer though, as there are plenty of “good” designs on Teespring too that t-shirt enthusiasts can enjoy too.

Teespring utilise a pretty wide variety of blanks for their shirts, in this case I received a Gildan softstyle blank. This is on the budget end of their offering but is still a pretty good shirt, genuinely soft and not too heavy, I am impressed by it, as I have been with other Gildan blanks over the past few years, clearly those heavy and scratchy Gildan shirts I would buy at gigs in the early 2000s are a thing of the past.

They also have American Apparel options and Bella, amongst others if you want to spend a couple more dollars per shirt. The difference isn’t that great between blanks so it’s not going to break the bank for you to go with a cut that you know is a better fit for your body.

There’s only really so much that you can judge about Teespring’s printing quality based on a black text slogan, but at the very least I can’t find anything negative. Much like the improvements in the past few years of “budget” blanks, the improvements of POD printing quality has been very impressive. It used to be such a compromise that I would generally avoid POD shirts and the samples I received usually wouldn’t end up being in my regular rotation of shirts because they would lose their vibrancy quickly. That seems to be much less of an issue nowadays, and of course with a black print on a heather grey shirt if it did fade a bit it would probably just look cooler anyway!

The print is very consistent with no differences in shade from one letter to the next, nice and sharp lines. Lightweight print too, so it’s uncrackable no matter how much I bend and stretch it.

Based on this tee I can’t fault Teespring. If you’re a “regular” customer then you can be assured you’ll be getting a decent product and the pricing looks pretty reasonable to me, and if you’re a designer then you can easily get a one-off printed, or test the water of launching a design without having to commit money into a stock run of screen printed tees.